Math Is Fun Forum

mathsyperson

Moderator

Registered: 2005-06-22

Posts: 4,900

Project Euler

Project Euler is a collection of puzzles that get you to mix maths ability with programming skills.

In most cases the problems are quite flexible, in that you can analyse them mathematically and then only need a simple program to solve it (or sometimes not need one at all), or you can write a more complex program to solve it right away.

Here are some examples:

- Add all the numbers less than 1000 that are multiples of 3 or 5.

- Find the sum of all the numbers that can be written as 5th powers of their digits (eg 1634 = 1^5 + 6^5 + 3^5 + 4^5).

- Find the last 10 digits of 1^1 + 2^2 + ... + 1000^1000.

Some of the later ones get far more horrific than that though.
Being fluent in some kind of programming language would definitely be an advantage, but it's generally not an absolute requirement. I found this site a few days ago, and so far I've managed to get to Level 1 (25 solved) using nothing more complex than a calculator or spreadsheet.

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Why did the vector cross the road?
It wanted to be normal.